


in every life a little rain

by cicak



Series: Coronavirus Decameron (WIP Amnesty 2020) [5]
Category: Hitman (Video Games)
Genre: (main game not DLC), Clothing Porn, Coma, Dream Logic, Dream Sex, F/M, Memory Palace, Secret Relationship, Unreliable Narrator, Yearning, references the end of Hitman 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23966176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: He remembers this day; she wasn’t there.
Relationships: Agent 47/Diana Burnwood
Series: Coronavirus Decameron (WIP Amnesty 2020) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666177
Comments: 22
Kudos: 112





	in every life a little rain

It's a beautiful autumn day. He's 25; more than half a lifetime ago now. It's the first time he's been in England, and it's like home in many ways, but nothing like it all the same. It's greyer, yes, but milder, the breeze lacking the harsh edge Romanian wind tends (tended; will tend) to have. It's _crisp_ , he thinks, thinking of a conversation he's yet to have.

"Wrap up warm, it's crisp this morning." Her voice in his ear, where it belongs. Her vowels are ripe, full, plummy. She leans into them when she's indulging him.

At this point his brain wasn't swiss cheese from the wiping procedure, and it's like his brain can almost remember its original structure, the index still intact, can remember parts of his childhood, his awkward teenage years, pain and pleasure and confusion, memories in languages he only speaks in memory.

At this point he knows he is dreaming, and this is a garbled world. There's a detonator in his hand and he can smell the strong almond smell of the Semtex on his fingers. He remembers how the smell lingers, why he doesn’t use it unless he has to because of how when he walks past bakeries afterwards he does a mental double take because the smell of almonds is always followed by the smell of blood.

HIs mature brain starts to protest; when he did this, he didn't know the girl wasn't with her parents. He heard the doors on the car. Counted one, two, three. Assumed the children had got in one after the other, because of the way the car had been parked with one door against the ancient oak. Heard the engine turn over, and pressed the button right on cue, exactly as he’d been told (he didn’t make his own plans back then). The explosion was textbook. He felt cold when he heard her scream as he hurried away, fleeing from the sirens in the distance.

No CCTV back then, so no records and a few weeks later there was another successful blanking wiping the last of the evidence, his memories. They’re all coming out now, though, bleeding into dreams.

Here, in the dream, it's all the same, caught in a loop. A crisp morning, leaves underfoot, the murmur of conversation, the smell of semtex. He counts the slam of the doors, one, two, three, hears the engine turn over, and this time when he presses the button he is the one who explodes.

He hears her scream, different from when she was a child. A woman’s scream, but he doesn’t know for sure if it is his Diana’s scream.

The world changes like the transition in a film. Smash to -

Nothing. He doesn't wake up. It's a blank place, not black, not white, just the absence of colour.

Coma, then, he thinks. Likely induced, either through drugs or medicine. He's injured, perhaps dying, but he’s done that before, remembers how it felt to bleed out, slowly, revisit his past in an indulgent way.

Remembers lying half dead in a safe house, waiting for her to evacuate him from a job gone wrong, the way she murmured in his ear, the words now forgotten.

Thinks of a kiss he doesn’t remember, because he was dead at the time, and she delivered the antidote to him disguised as grief. All of this feeling, in a void of voidness.

The world crystallises around him like he’s in a simulation and this time, he's in a church built of bones. Sedlec Ossury, Czech Republic, Diana’s voice supplies, but he's been there and knows that she’s wrong, this place it's too big, and unlike the bleached bones, there’s too much blood and no real tourists, only bystanders. He should focus on the blood, but instead it's the faces. The faces of the people he killed that didn't deserve it, who caught a bullet, who weren't clean, deserving. Collateral damage, mounted on ancient walls, evidence of his crimes.

"Don't feel bad", Diana says to him, taking his hand. She’s wearing black gloves, trimmed with red, but her hand is warm. "You did what you could. You got the job done. It's all we've ever asked of you."

"You could have asked for more," he thinks. He never would have said it to her, something so raw.

"You could have asked for more," he says, because this is a dream.

"I know," Diana replies. She's next to him, and he can feel her breath in his right ear. "We underestimated you. I will never do that again, I promise. Take the exit on the left."

He stands and walks out of the door, into the bright sunshine of Dubai. His suit changes into a summer suit of pale lemon linen. The avatar of Diana slides her arm through his, but no matter how much he wants to, he can't turn his head to look at her. He knows it is her, even before she speaks. He remembers this day; she wasn’t there. This vision of her is accurate though, even though at this time they hadn't seen each other in a decade. Her hair was long, then, and darker, from an overreaction to a single grey hair. It took a long time for her to get her true shade back, hard to match true auburn, even when you go to the best hairdresser in London. (How would he know that? He’s never had hair, never been to a salon, and they’ve never talked about it, that he can remember.)

They stroll arm in arm through a huge shopping mall, past Chanel and Cartier and Givenchy, and he knows, from the collections, that it's 2009, spring/summer leading into the resort collection, not that it matters, as none of this is real.

“They’re digging into your brain”, the avatar of Diana on his arm says, as she tries on a pair of dizzyingly high Pigalles in Christian Louboutin. They’re of equal height once she gets her balance in the 120mm heels on the plush carpeted floor of the boutique, and his brain is whirling, trying to fill in the cracks as he stands behind her and admires her, half a memory, half a fantasy. He’s never seen her this tall, never seen her in patent leather.

“They think you know something, that you saw something,” she says, handing over the shoes to the faceless attendant, nodding. The stiletto heels gleam with obsidian menace.

“Did I?” he asks. The shop assistant asks him for his credit card, and he hands it over. The sleek black Amex is registered to Tobias Burnwood, and it makes his heart clench.

“How should I know?” Diana says. “I’m not real. This is your comatose brain reacting to the drugs they’ve given you.”

She turns to him, and grins mischievously. “Come, I want to see you in Tom Ford.”

He gets his suits carefully made to order from an old, blind Italian tailor on the Riviera, former tailor to the mafia before he retired. He knows how to cut a slim fit with space for guns. He's worn designer suits, but not for a long time, not since he learned how to combine his business with the pleasure of fine tailoring.

She leads him into the changing room and watches from the corner as he changes into what she’s picked for him. The suit is a dark green silk-wool blend, so dark it’s nearly black, and it cups his shoulders like a lover and his buttocks like a sexual predator. It's a suit for sex, for someone who knows they should be admired, adored, seen. It’s too much. He looks fantastic. Their eyes meet in the mirror, and then he notices a blossoming of blood on the silk shirt, bright red staining the _crisp white_.

“They’re hurting you now”, Diana says dreamily, her hands pressed against the stain, her hands covered in his blood as she helps him out of the shirt, taking the time to hang it on the door of the changing cubicle. “They’re getting frustrated. The drugs haven’t worked, and the violence won’t work while you’re unconscious. They disabled your main tracker, but they don’t know about the other one. We need to keep you alive long enough for the extraction team to come get you. Or for me to bring the car around. I’m not sure where in your timeline we are.”

He slumps, catching himself on the walls of the changing room, dropping heavily down against the mirror. “Diana,” he groans. The chill of the air conditioning that pervades Dubai starts to fade away. Where they have him is hot, either that or he’s burning up.

“It's both”, Diana says, kneeling in front of him. “You’ve had a reaction to the drugs, spiking a fever, and you’re in Athens in the middle of summer. It’s 40 degrees celsius, and you’re in a locked room. They put something in your drink; you should avoid Ouzo in the future, but I think this is a sign you’re waking up.”

She puts her hands on his face, and they’re cool. “What do you need, 47? We need to buy time. I need to keep you here, with me, inside.” she whispers. “What do you want? What can I do for you?”

“I want to go somewhere else”, he whispers, and it’s enough, somehow, to bring him back under enough to get relief. Tokyo, in autumn, a cool breeze blowing in. The serviced apartments the ICA keeps in Minato overlooks Tokyo Tower and Embassy row. There’s a place that does good eel nearby, next to the karaoke bar he strangled the Australian military attache in while he sang Baba O'Riley.

Diana looks like she did when they flew together last, sensible heels, Burberry trench coat over a fine pleated dress. Comfortable and chic for a long-haul flight, she was the very picture of a woman who belongs in first class, on the arm of a man like him.

He shakes his head. That’s not right. They’ve never flown together. Not in the middle seats in first class, two-together dining together at 30,000 feet, privacy screens up even though they’re the only passengers, a bottle of Krug chilling by Diana’s feet nearly empty, the crew in the galley, safely paid off to not see anything out of the ordinary.

She hands him a glass of wine, and clinks it with hers, the lights of Tokyo glittering in the background. “Are you remembering?” she says. “Do you remember why they want you?”

The wine is sweeter than she normally drinks, normally he complains that he doesn’t like to kiss her after _crisp white_ wine as he finds her mouth too dry.

No, no, not real. He’s losing connection to reality. He’s never kissed her, never thought about it.

“Have you not?” she says, and she’s wearing the heels, the heels he bought her in Dubai, all those years ago and left on her desk back at headquarters, in her locked office, tied with a bow. No one had known it was him, and he’d never seen her wear them, didn’t even know if she’d kept them not until that night, when she’d surprised him in the safe house, all those years later.

The holes in his memory have always plagued him, but they’ve never made things up. Maybe this drug is messing with him, or maybe he just is forgetful.

She’s as tall as him, and it's a memory, not a fantasy, of kissing her when she’s this tall.

“No, we’ve never”, he mutters against her mouth. “I’d remember,”

“I’d hope so.” she scolded, pushing him down onto a bed, her long legs straddling him, gripping him tight. “I’d hate to be forgettable.”

There’s a knife in her stockings, and she’s still wearing the shoes, but now she’s wearing nothing else. He leans up and kisses her neck, undoes her hair from its chignon and messes it up with his hands until she looks like a revenging angel, red hair, full breasts, pale skin and fond irritation. “They’re trying to get a rise out of you,” she says, unzipping his flies and reaching in to wrap her hand around his cock. “Or trying to make you rise, or some other euphemism. You’re doing so well, 47, you just need to hang on.”

There’s a flip-book of memories and fantasies and archetypes, of other women and yet no one but her, the long moment as she rubs him against her wetness before she slips him inside her and sinks down, sighing contentedly. She rises gently, testing how well he’s rooted inside, whether he’s secure enough, and watches him with half-closed eyes, puts her hands in her hair and gently, slowly, torturously rides him, and he has no idea if this was ever real, but god, he hopes it was, or is, or that he has developed second sight because she’s beautiful and it's unfair if he’s about to die and he never got to have this.

He’s warm, boiling, and it doesn’t feel like the sweat of sex and passion, but of oppressive midday sun and close-quarters concrete, but he forces himself to focus on her, grip her hips and push back against her, cataloging her gasps and whimpers of pleasure as if they’re the only thing that is keeping him together.

“I’m very close though”, she whispers in his ear, “hold it together, and I’ll come for you. I’m nearly there, so close -”

He shudders, then opens his eyes. There’s pain, and blood, and the men who have been torturing them have been distracted by some distraction outside, their anonymous faces looking the other way the moment he comes round. It is a small room, shabby and hot like a sauna, and the radio is playing some Greek torch song loud enough to hurt mortal ears, loud enough to drown out the sound of torture on a summer’s day. When he stands, grabbing the length of pipe they’d used on him, he’s relieved it is also loud enough to drown out the sounds of revenge.

He stashes their bodies, wipes off the blood, gets dressed in their clothes, and when he steps out onto the busy Athenian street, Diana comes for him, her lipstick perfect, heels abandoned in the foot well of the car she’s stolen. He slides into the passenger seat and scoops them up, rubbing his thumbs along the red soles as she puts her foot down and gets them out of there.

**Author's Note:**

> Another successful* entry in the WIP amnesty 2020! Some dream logic/secret relationship/coma avatar/mind palace. Of course, in writing this I got an idea for another fic, this WIP amnesty is not working in getting my WIP folder under control.
> 
> Title from Long Forgotten Fairytale by The Magnetic Fields, but its referencing a Longfellow poem apparently.
> 
> *citation needed
> 
> I'm always up to yell about Hitman over on [my tumblr](http://cicaklah.tumblr.com) so come say hi!


End file.
